FRANK AMBERLEY’S EXULTATION.
Lucia Guiscardini was determined not to come face to face again with Paul Desfrayne if she could help it.
The evening of the day she saw him by accident at the Zoological Gardens, she was obliged to appear at the opera.
Never, perhaps, had she performed more resplendently, yet all the time she was meditating how to escape a second interview.
She settled the matter after her own fashion.
Ordering her maid to pack up a few necessary things, she started by the midnight train for Paris.
“I hate him,” she said to herself, as she sank back into a dim corner in the first-class carriage as it rattled away from Charing Cross; “and I would kill him if I could, and if I thought nobody could find it out. What a weak fool I must have been! But I was in too great a hurry to secure what I rashly imagined to be a splendid prize. And to think that I might be a princess if I were not tied by this hateful bond! Women have crushed others before for less cause.”
The consequence was, that when Paul Desfrayne called at the house so strangely contiguous to that in which his mother dwelt, he was informed that madam was not in town.
“Not in town?” he repeated, with amazement.
Further inquiries elicited that madam had gone away rather suddenly—gone to Paris, the man believed, and had not left word when she might return.